Pig Boy's Wicked Bird: A Memoir

by Doug Crandell

Book Overview

This gritty tragicomic memoir is set in one memorable year--1976, the Bicentennial, when Jimmy Carter ran for president and seven-year-old Doug Crandell lost two fingers in a farming accident. More than anything, Doug wants to shed his nickname, Pig Boy, and grow up to be a hog man like his father. His older brother Derrick reads pulp novels to him each night as he soaks his remaining fingers in Epsom salts. His brothers urge him to "flip the Wicked...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556525524
• ISBN13: 9781556525520
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.8"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

Good writing does exist!

There is a wealth of people out there who have grown up in a family that doesn't seem just right. Television for a lack of decent material exploits the dysfunctional family as it exaggerates the flaws of family life in America. "Pig Boy's Wicked Bird" by Doug Crandell tells a different side of the story. Yes, life is full of absurdity and tragedy but what comes out of this book is a recollection of our own past growing up and as weird as it seemed...it was wonderful too. Intelligently written and a delight to read I give it 2 thumbs up and a nub for good measure! This is a great life story!

I agree exactly with John McNally

This is a book I stepped into with confidence and pleasure, and emerged from profoundly satisfied.

Don't Enter The Midwest Without Crandell's Pigboy

Like most everyone else, I breeze through Indiana on my way to somewhere else that I am certain is far more interesting. All the while I wonder: Why do these people live here? What do they do here? Why do they want to stay here? Pig Boy's Wicked Bird will answer your questions. Crandell brings to life "those people" that you so easily dismissed as they come to life not out there where it is safe, but inside of you. This is a great book. The wisest among us will catch this young already award-winning writer's first novel early and say "Well I'll be damned". This book will someday be required reading in every college english department and missed of course by every college psychology department. Your search for the meaning of life is over. Thank Doug Crandell.

Funny and Heartwrenching

"Pig Boy's Wicked Bird" is the perfect antidote to so much of what passes for good writing these days (urban, hip, detached, clever, etc). In prose that is artful because of its precision and care, Doug Crandell writes about growing up in a sharecropping family in rural Indiana, a subject that is neither urban nor hip, but that is worthy of literature's best -- and I'm happy to report that Mr. Crandell has pulled it off. From its haunting opening (the legend of Pig Boy himself), we feel securely in the hands of a talented storyteller, and it is with no difficulty that we give ourselves over to this book, which is by turns funny and heartwrenching. If you enjoy Tobias Wolff's "This Boy's Life," you'll enjoy "Pig Boy's Wicked Bird."

Tell me another story Daddy!

When I read Mishima's "Confessions of a Mask" I learned a lot about the inner workings of a genius madman exposing his biolgical reality. When I read Pig boy I find an explosively intriguing story about humanity we rarely are gifted with. Bukowski might have written this if he hadn't grown up in LA poverty (and drank a little less) instead of Crandell's middle farm poverty. Delaney's Dahlgren.. something about Crandell's writing takes me to memories of my favorite books and authors. Bravo, Mr Crandell now you people go out and get this book, you will be glad you did.